It was Ed Miliband's first prime minister's questions, and he wasn't bad at all. This clearly came as a surprise to many of his backbenchers, who've been chuntering on for weeks about union members foisting on them a lefty who looks like a nervous panda on his gap year.

Having watched the event, I listened to it again on my sound recorder and he sounded even better, his voice deep and almost mellow while David Cameron became increasingly shrill. This was good news for Miliband: usually it's the job of the leader of the opposition to seem on the brink of hysteria. And Cameron sounded more rattled than he has for some time.

The panda also scored a good point. The government has yet to come up with a reason why many double-income households raking in more than £80,000 a year will keep child benefit while those with one income of barely more than half that will lose it. The prime minister kept repeating that Labour wanted to tax the poor in order to tuck more dosh into the pockets of plutocrats.

He painted an affecting picture of thousands of people in Doncaster North (Ed's constituency) who earn one-sixth of his salary and will have to give up even bread and dripping sandwiches, while listening to the piteous squeaks of their starving ferrets, in order to pay the Milibands' child benefit, which will be spent on foie gras and Château Pétrus. I may have sketched in some of the details here, but this is the picture, the terrifying Gustave Doré engraving, the prime minister wanted to evoke.

It all began politely enough, with Cameron offering good wishes and hoping, sarcastically, that Miliband would have "many, many years" in the job.

Then we were off. Cameron pointed out that £1bn was being raised from the 15% of higher-rate taxpayers. What was unfair about that?

"I may be new to this game," said Miliband, "but I think that I ask the questions and he gives the answers." He had a Cameron quote: before the election he had declared himself against means-testing child benefit.

"I agree with the prime minister," said Miliband. "Why doesn't he?"

Expecting politicians to do what they promise? Where will that end? National bankruptcy. So Cameron treated this barb with a disdainful ignoral.

Miliband riposted that the Tory policy had been such a shambles that they probably wished the BBC blackout of their conference had gone ahead. Cameron, sounding more and more petulant, asked why Labour was suddenly so solicitous for the "squeezed middle", or society's gastric band, as I think of it.

Later, there was a tribute to Claire Rayner, the agony aunt who died this week. She had promised to haunt Cameron if he "screwed up" her beloved NHS. He replied that he had grown up listening to her on the radio, and would never do anything to upset her memory.

"Now, dear, you will look after the NHS, won't you, dearie?" we imagined her shade nagging the premier as Labour MPs cheered their new leader, who must have been as relieved as they were.